We’re on a smoke break when Claudia tells me that her husband said she’s ugly when she cries, and I almost ask her, What he do, what happened this time, but then I think, Don’t be a fool, this is what you been waiting for, and I take her hands, look into her eyes, and start to give her all my best ideas on how to leave Greg – Greg who treats Claudia like a greasy rag he can pull out of his back pocket whenever there’s a mess, Greg who likes that Claudia’s ass is wide but not her nose or her waist – and it feels good to feed her these pieces I’ve been carrying in the space underneath my tongue for so long, some so bitter I thought I might choke on them, and I know she doesn’t really want to hear it but I tell her anyway, and I say things like, Bleach everything in his closet, yeah even his new shoes, especially those, and, Throw all his shit out the window and watch it smash real ugly to the ground, and I can tell she doesn’t mean to but she finally starts to smile, her lips full and pretty as a plum, and there under the honey glow of the streetlamp I think about how Claudia has the most beautiful brown skin I’ve ever seen, like Aunt Rikki, who was still beautiful even when she shaved off all her hair, piles and piles of inky black kinks on my grandmama’s kitchen floor, Aunt Rikki who spit out a mouthful of bright red venom on cream-colored tiles when grandaddy sent her out the door with a busted lip, warned her not to bring her dyke friends around me and my cousins, not good girls like us, and I think about how I still can’t forget that day, more than forty years later, and how I still can’t forget that morning, two months ago, when Claudia showed up for our shift with a dark purple bruise blooming at the base of her throat, how the college girls who worked with us teased her about her hickey, and how Claudia, only a few years older, laughed and let them believe it, and I remember how she wouldn’t meet my eyes but still asked to stay with me, how she said no, she wasn’t scared, but that she needed to teach Greg a lesson, and that night, sitting on my couch, dinner plates resting on our knees, everything felt right without me even trying, and I liked that Claudia didn’t ask me if I ever been married or had kids or why there weren’t any pictures of my family, and that she only wanted to talk about the kind of TV shows I watched and the things I used to like when I was young, and I remember how later, something deep inside of her burst that I couldn’t see, and I held Claudia as the sun went down, the last of its glow pouring over us, an animal kind of wail rattling from her throat and filling the space, and how I knew I shouldn’t ask but I had to know if she was like my Aunt Rita, if she was like me, and how she said she wasn’t sure but that she liked the idea of me and my golden apartment being home, and I think about how I believed her, even though nothing else happened that night, even though she left before I woke the next morning and we never talked about that moment on the couch again, and I think about how I still believe Claudia now, as I hold her hands, and I know I was right to find some small piece of her to touch because she leans in and kisses me and it’s the most glorious thing I’ve ever felt, the sting of her lips and that hot blooming down below and of course this is why my grandmama told me not to linger too long there with the washcloth when I was old enough to start taking baths on my own, and I almost laugh at the memory, at the thought that she would deny me the pleasure of knowing my own body, but then Claudia is pulling away, and I’m searching for those soft brown eyes in the shadows as she says something about forgiveness and then something else about babies, but most importantly vows and how she can never break those, not even for a good friend like me, not even if I take her out for breakfast every Sunday or learn all the words to her favorite songs or tell her that she’s beautiful when she’s really not, and then I’m watching Claudia stub out the cigarette with the bottom of her shoe, watching her round the corner of the alley as she smooths the back of that stupid pink uniform that they make us wear, even though it stains like hell, even when we scrub and scrub and scrub at the grease until our fingers are white and raw, even when we know that some things, once they’re set deep enough, can never be washed away.
Lindsay Ferguson lives and writes in Columbus, Ohio, where she was raised. This is her first published piece of fiction.